


punch yourself, it’ll hurt less

by notveryhandy



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24557032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notveryhandy/pseuds/notveryhandy
Summary: Mixing Doctors and Masters, as it turns out, is a very bad idea.(Or: the mismatched thoschei-ish fic all of two people asked for.)
Relationships: The Doctor & The Master, The Doctor/The Master
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	punch yourself, it’ll hurt less

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yourlocalhalo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlocalhalo/gifts).



The Master smirked. “Hello, Doctor dear. My, they just drop like flies, don’t they?”

The Doctor snarled.

“Yes, I know it’s you,” he said, waving a hand carelessly. “Timelines, Rassilon, you don’t need me to go on and on, do you?”

“Shut the fuck up.” She dropped her screwdriver, shaking as she stepped towards the Master. “Shut the _fuck_ up!”

The Doctor pinned him to the wall, taking the Master by surprise. “And if you don’t I’ll smash your face in. Get out of my sight.”

The Master chuckled. “Of course.”

“No, no - this isn’t a goddamn joke. I swear, if you don’t zip it and leave, I’ll cut your tongue out. Damn you, damn you, damn you-”

The Master stared, eyes wide. It was unusual to see such a display of force and anger.

Something must have gone very, very wrong.

* * *

The Doctor returned, hours later, smiling brightly, as if their earlier exchange had not happened.

“My dear, you are aware that I do not have a way out?”

“Yeah, ‘course I am,” the Doctor said, stumbling down into a chair with the elegance of a drunk ostrich. 

“You know, it is enjoyable to be taller than you for once.”

“Don’t let it go to your head,” she muttered, shoving her hands in her pockets.

“Oddly bitter about such a rare occurrence, aren’t you?” 

“Nah,” she said, although she was gritting her teeth. “Why would I be bothered?”

He sat back lazily. “Oh, I don’t know,” the Master said. “Perhaps it’s happening a little too frequently for your liking?”

“Oh, don’t worry, it’ll happen again.”

“Will it now.”

Fascinating. So he got to be tall in the future.

“Don’t go getting any ideas, the tallest you’ve ever been was a possessed body and the current you - yes, you’re taller than me again, shut up - is sharing a body with the Cyberium.”

“The Cyberium?”

“Go _away_.” She batted at the Master’s arm. “And don’t you go exploring my Tardis. Or killing anyone.”

Shame.

* * *

“I do have to leave your disgrace of a Tardis at _some_ point,” the Master pointed out.

“Yeah, but I don’t trust you to run around Sheffield. To be honest, I’m not sure I entirely trust you even locked up like this.”

“So you’re going to - what, jail me?”

She nodded. “I’ve got nothing else to do.”

“Why?”

The Doctor’s eyes went dark. “You don’t want to know.”

“I do.”

“No.” She shook her head frantically. “No, you fucking _don’t._ ”

“You think you know me better than you know yourself?”

The Doctor bristled, as if provoked. “I know you well enough, surely.”

“Hardly likely.”

She stormed out at that, leaving slight shock and a raised eyebrow in her wake.

* * *

The Master stumbled into all of zero humans, which in itself should have been unsettling, but he was more distracted by just how morose the Doctor was acting. She’d stalk out rooms at the slightest of provocations, and kept on making pointed comments which served nothing but to infuriate herself further.

“Why is is so _quiet_ in here?”

The Doctor didn’t look up from the console. “Why won’t you stop asking questions?”

“You’re deflecting,” he noted.

“When am I not?”

The Master gritted his teeth. “I would simply like to have a civil conversation without you running out on me.”

“Given... well, _us,_ I don’t know why you expect _that._ ”

True, not that he’d admit it.

* * *

The Master winced, pulling his hand away from the sparking console. “I suppose I should have expected that.”

The Tardis made another pointed burst of fire, narrowly avoiding setting _him_ alight too and singeing his clothes yet again. Damn this machine and all its annoying habits.

The Tardis herself clearly didn’t like his continued poking around, sending the console shaking when he tried to pull part of it apart. Loose wires caught around his ankles, binding them together along with his hands.

After what felt like an embarrassingly long time standing there trying to escape, the Doctor emerged from her hiding place with a pair of wire cutters.

“Here to help me? I see you came prepared.”

“No, not if you’re gonna act like that.”

The Master shifted. “Well then.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll let you go.” She said it with much irritation on her part.

“ _Thank_ you. At last, a smart idea from you.”

She glared, and set about cutting him free, not meeting his gaze once.

* * *

He caught screaming. 

High-pitched, raw, painful to hear. The Master clamped his hands over his ears, striding through the corridors, prepared for the worst.

One of the doors on the Tardis was open, just slightly. The one he now recognised as the Doctor’s, the one which the awful sobbing was emerging. The Doctor, curled up against a wall, shaking and sobbing and almost begging.

“No no no leave them alone don't hurt them hurt me hurt me instead-” She twisted and drew her knees up further to her chest. Hallucinations, perhaps?

The Master looked at her. “When, my dear, was the last time you slept?”

She didn’t see him.

 _Perhaps,_ he thought, _that is for the best._

* * *

The Doctor said nothing the next morning, content to moodily stir her cereal. Frankly, anything the Doctor had made wasn’t worth eating.

He’d learnt of this Doctor’s cooking skills the hard way. Maybe her tea would be better-

Oh. Oh no. No, it really wasn’t. “How in the universe did you manage to concoct something so utterly irredeemable?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Bit hit and miss, this time round.”

“A _bit._ ”

“Yeah?”

“Really.”

She put her hands up, as if to say _I give up._

“Please, Doctor, don’t ever offer me your food or drink again. I would much rather die.”

At that, the Doctor dragged herself off to the other side of the table to sulk.

* * *

In the end, escaping was not so hard. It merely took recovering his (now somewhat warped) TCE, distracting the Doctor with an Earth puzzle of some sort, and dashing out the Tardis with a certain dramatic flair, cackling quietly all the way.

Though he did manage to get out, he quickly figured out he had nowhere to go now. After standing around awkwardly for more or less an hour, the Doctor finally found him. “Stuck?” she asked, grinning.

“...maybe.”

“Would you like me to take you back to whatever evil scheme you came from?”

“If you wish,” he said curtly.

The Doctor dragged him by the wrist (she was scarily careless and rough with touch, this one). “Someday I’ll have to sue you for emotional damages. Can’t have you giving me all this stress.”

“You don’t look particularly stressed.”

“I- fuck, I- never mind. You heard nothing about any sort of emotion from me.”

“Lying, again? Oh dear.”

“Oh, shut up. Or punch yourself, that’ll hurt you less than staying quiet.” She started piloting the Tardis into the time vortex somewhat clumsily.

 _And physical damage is far less_ _painful than losing you again, so soon,_ she thought. _W_ _in some, lose most. Especially the Master._

The Doctor shoved him out the Tardis playfully, having landed. _And I can’t say my Master is a win._

Frankly, she thought, losing her Master would be a relief. But having seen the past there, so much less broken and so unguarded, was a far worse pain than any punch could deliver.


End file.
